Relevant to recent preoccupations, my pal Shane Rooney pointed me to this relevant science news. I'm so glad to see these experiments are going on in Pittsburgh; it just wouldn't be the same if it were happening in, say, Des Moines.
And this development may force me to rethink my stance on contributing to my law school alma mater, provided I can designate where the money goes. My check will be the one with the memo line: FOR CANINE NECROMANCY ONLY.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Suddenly, falling down the steps while carrying fresh game or slamming your hand in a car door doesn't seem so bad
Alternate title: Suddenly, cutting your pitching hand while opening a DVD with a steak knife or being repeatedly punched by Tawny Kitaen doesn't seem so bad.
*shakes head*
*shakes head*
Monday, June 27, 2005
More DEAD
A couple of weeks ago I worried this was becoming too sports-heavy. Now, I'm thinking too horror-heavy.
On Saturday I took the girls to Monster Bash, a movie monster convention. Ben Chapman, Forrest Ackerman and a bunch of others made appearances. We stayed for three hours, or about as long as our youngest would permit, and had a good time. Bill Hinzman, who Romero devotees know as the cemetary zombie and the very first zombie to appear, was there in costume, looked scarcely a day older and signed a glossy photo for me of him emerging from Johnny's body to chase Barbara. "I'm coming to get you next, Russ." I need to set this up with image-hosting capabilities so I can post it and the photo Ali took of him posing with Leah. The two older girls have been teasing their younger sister with "They're coming to get you, Barbara" long enough that it felt like coming full circle.
I also had a chance to meet and talk with Kyra Schon, the girl in the cellar. She was a pleasure to talk with, and if the trowels with the painted-on image of her going after her mom had been $10 cheaper, I'd own one.
On Saturday I took the girls to Monster Bash, a movie monster convention. Ben Chapman, Forrest Ackerman and a bunch of others made appearances. We stayed for three hours, or about as long as our youngest would permit, and had a good time. Bill Hinzman, who Romero devotees know as the cemetary zombie and the very first zombie to appear, was there in costume, looked scarcely a day older and signed a glossy photo for me of him emerging from Johnny's body to chase Barbara. "I'm coming to get you next, Russ." I need to set this up with image-hosting capabilities so I can post it and the photo Ali took of him posing with Leah. The two older girls have been teasing their younger sister with "They're coming to get you, Barbara" long enough that it felt like coming full circle.
I also had a chance to meet and talk with Kyra Schon, the girl in the cellar. She was a pleasure to talk with, and if the trowels with the painted-on image of her going after her mom had been $10 cheaper, I'd own one.
More LAND
The internet vortex Beaks has written his erudite response to Land of the Dead. Hey, thanks for the shout-out. He takes the analysis of Romero's themes to another level, and I really love what he has to say about how the zombies appear changes. I'm really glad of his mention of the human underclass ("while the undesirables (mostly minorities) are, in a sort of feudalistic set-up, relegated to the outlying areas. It ain't a hospitable existence, but it is relatively zombie-proof (of course, the humans are still free and willing to do harm unto each other).") It jogs something that I forgot to write about last week.
I haven't said anything yet about the scene in the club where Riley rescues Slack. From a summary or a review, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that Romero paints the human underclass as the noble proletariat. It's not that simple (it never is). We only see bits and pieces of them apart from the main ensemble cast. En masse, we see the underclass on the streets briefly, milling around and ignoring the religious and political organizers. We also see them en masse in the club scene.
The club's an ugly place. As before, zombies are used for entertainment-- zombie photos and the paintball gallery-- and debasement. But you've also got a human woman topless in a cage-- and not randomly. And, of course, you've got the sport of watching two zombies tear apart a woman. We hear that Kaufman funds this vice, and that's not surprising, but he funds it because he knows they want to buy it and it will keep them from more heightened concerns. How is the underclass going to pull itself out of Kaufman's hegemony when it can't tear itself away from these base distractions? It's telling that the police show up and arrest Riley et al after the rescue and the shooting of the little man. Keeping the peace (read: the status quo) means keeping those vices in business and arresting anyone who threatens their existence.
Of course, the distractions of the club are a great complement to the distractions posed by the fireworks.
I haven't said anything yet about the scene in the club where Riley rescues Slack. From a summary or a review, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that Romero paints the human underclass as the noble proletariat. It's not that simple (it never is). We only see bits and pieces of them apart from the main ensemble cast. En masse, we see the underclass on the streets briefly, milling around and ignoring the religious and political organizers. We also see them en masse in the club scene.
The club's an ugly place. As before, zombies are used for entertainment-- zombie photos and the paintball gallery-- and debasement. But you've also got a human woman topless in a cage-- and not randomly. And, of course, you've got the sport of watching two zombies tear apart a woman. We hear that Kaufman funds this vice, and that's not surprising, but he funds it because he knows they want to buy it and it will keep them from more heightened concerns. How is the underclass going to pull itself out of Kaufman's hegemony when it can't tear itself away from these base distractions? It's telling that the police show up and arrest Riley et al after the rescue and the shooting of the little man. Keeping the peace (read: the status quo) means keeping those vices in business and arresting anyone who threatens their existence.
Of course, the distractions of the club are a great complement to the distractions posed by the fireworks.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
LAND OF THE DEAD
I. The Festivities
What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.
Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.
After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.
Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.
II. The film
Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.
Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.
I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.
The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.
Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.
Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.
But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.
(Spoilers follow)
Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.
Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.
The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.
And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.
Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.
What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.
Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.
After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.
Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.
II. The film
Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.
Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.
I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.
The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.
Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.
Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.
But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.
(Spoilers follow)
Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.
Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.
The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.
And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.
Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
My Wednesday Plans
Tomorrow night I'll be here, catching the show and the pre- and post-festivities. I can't tell you how juiced I am.
I just rewatched Day of the Dead and, while I think it has some obvious charms, it's still clearly the lesser of the three films for me. More complete remarks are in a draft post I hope to finish tonight. The other draft post concerns Rosetta, but that probably won't come tonight. I wrote a couple of pages after seeing the Batman movie to try to work through why it left me so unmoved, and I'd like to put them up later tonight as well.
It's funny, though, and I've spent a little time over the past week wondering about why I've given up on comic book movies generally while clinging to Romero's oevre. One of my first thoughts after emerging from the theater last week was that the odds are heavily stacked against me liking War of the Worlds. Based on where I felt my mind drifting during Batman, I think that I'm getting to the point where When the Fate...of the World...Hangs in the Balance...I am just bored out of my skull. I couldn't have felt less invested in the saving of Gotham City. I seem to have liked Revenge of the Sith more than most of my correspondents, and perhaps that's because there's the plausible possibility of the hero's failure (which becomes, of course, reality). Katie Holmes deciding she can't be part of any relationship that involves a person wearing masks is not a credible stand-in for dramatic tension or heroic failure, no matter how bright the Irony-Signal shines in the moonlit night sky.
This is the summer where thirtysomething man-boys wax rhapsodically about how much wookiees meant to them during those formative years. All right, I'll play. My parents split up right around Easter of 1983. I was finishing sixth grade. Return of the Jedi came out that summer and I was all over it. I saw it three times in the theater. In contrast to that space fantasy holdover from my preteen years, my family life paradigm was shifted and reinvented every month or so. Plus, that fall I started seventh grade at the junior high, which threw the 75 or so of us from my elementary school in with unfamiliar kids from four or five other feeder elementary schools. Everything was possible. For a kid like me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to move away from the robots and spaceships dork that I'd cheerfully embodied. When I met a new friend with a worldly high school brother who perpetually wore those cheap concert t-shirts with the black body and white three-quarter sleeves, it was a chance to hear a lot of new music and to get a VHS dub of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
Sure, to my thirteen year-old eyes, the attraction was largely the thrill of holding something generally-forbidden or antisocial. Gorewise, I'd never seen anything like it. The stories were compelling, maybe less so than that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but substantially moreso than the other ripoff films that followed in the wake of Star Wars and Raiders. For my friends and I, the dystopia of Romero's films made us put ourselves in his characters' places in a way that few, if any, other films had managed to do. Sure, at the beginning, it was the same sort of quasi-Red Dawn survivalist hokum that kids would be spinning a year down the road. Where would you hide? Where would you get weapons? Who would you save? But it always went further than that with Romero's films for us because the films steadfastly refuse to rest on the us/them distinctions that let kids think they can be a Wolverine and rule the hills if they get some guns and cheerios. I couldn't have articulated it then, certainly, but Romero's zombie films have always been all about destroying the Other that fuels both horror movies and real-life genocides. We're all just a bite away from being the Other.
I'll now invoke that cliche about movies that grow with you. Imagine the montage: me watching the films at 13, mulleted and talking with my pals about the safest place to go. Then me watching the films at 18, getting the subtexts a little better. In my twenties I watch them more infrequently, preferring cleaner escapist fun for the first few years and misplacing that old VHS dub during a move. And then my late twenties/thirties, when DVD makes fantastic versions of these films cheap and widely-available and I'm impressed by how much is in there behind the blood.
Apart from the Romero movies, I never got into gore. I can't tell any of the Friday the 13th movies apart. Apart from his recut of Dawn, I've never seen an Argento film. Still, I count Romero's films as among the most meaningful to me because they're so clearly more than genre films, and I'd rank his first two Dead films in the top ten American horror films, in the same rarefied air as Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freaks, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rosemary's Baby.
Both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead open with the female leads waking from nightmares. It's not just lazy repetition. What they're dreaming of is a doomsday that has come true, and the innocent desire to wake up and discover that it was all the mind's trickery is all the hope that remains. Can I tell you that I've never dreamed of flying in an X-Wing or fighting a lightsaber battle? Sure, that Joseph Campbell hero's journey bullshit might run rampant through our myth patterns, but it never ran freely through my subconscious. Nor have I ever literally dreamed that I was a superhero. But over the last twenty years, I've dreamed at least ten times that I was in Romero's broken world where there's no more room in hell. Man, waking up from that dream is something else. It runs deep. And tomorrow night I'll probably get the chance to shake his hand and tell him thanks.
I just rewatched Day of the Dead and, while I think it has some obvious charms, it's still clearly the lesser of the three films for me. More complete remarks are in a draft post I hope to finish tonight. The other draft post concerns Rosetta, but that probably won't come tonight. I wrote a couple of pages after seeing the Batman movie to try to work through why it left me so unmoved, and I'd like to put them up later tonight as well.
It's funny, though, and I've spent a little time over the past week wondering about why I've given up on comic book movies generally while clinging to Romero's oevre. One of my first thoughts after emerging from the theater last week was that the odds are heavily stacked against me liking War of the Worlds. Based on where I felt my mind drifting during Batman, I think that I'm getting to the point where When the Fate...of the World...Hangs in the Balance...I am just bored out of my skull. I couldn't have felt less invested in the saving of Gotham City. I seem to have liked Revenge of the Sith more than most of my correspondents, and perhaps that's because there's the plausible possibility of the hero's failure (which becomes, of course, reality). Katie Holmes deciding she can't be part of any relationship that involves a person wearing masks is not a credible stand-in for dramatic tension or heroic failure, no matter how bright the Irony-Signal shines in the moonlit night sky.
This is the summer where thirtysomething man-boys wax rhapsodically about how much wookiees meant to them during those formative years. All right, I'll play. My parents split up right around Easter of 1983. I was finishing sixth grade. Return of the Jedi came out that summer and I was all over it. I saw it three times in the theater. In contrast to that space fantasy holdover from my preteen years, my family life paradigm was shifted and reinvented every month or so. Plus, that fall I started seventh grade at the junior high, which threw the 75 or so of us from my elementary school in with unfamiliar kids from four or five other feeder elementary schools. Everything was possible. For a kid like me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to move away from the robots and spaceships dork that I'd cheerfully embodied. When I met a new friend with a worldly high school brother who perpetually wore those cheap concert t-shirts with the black body and white three-quarter sleeves, it was a chance to hear a lot of new music and to get a VHS dub of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
Sure, to my thirteen year-old eyes, the attraction was largely the thrill of holding something generally-forbidden or antisocial. Gorewise, I'd never seen anything like it. The stories were compelling, maybe less so than that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but substantially moreso than the other ripoff films that followed in the wake of Star Wars and Raiders. For my friends and I, the dystopia of Romero's films made us put ourselves in his characters' places in a way that few, if any, other films had managed to do. Sure, at the beginning, it was the same sort of quasi-Red Dawn survivalist hokum that kids would be spinning a year down the road. Where would you hide? Where would you get weapons? Who would you save? But it always went further than that with Romero's films for us because the films steadfastly refuse to rest on the us/them distinctions that let kids think they can be a Wolverine and rule the hills if they get some guns and cheerios. I couldn't have articulated it then, certainly, but Romero's zombie films have always been all about destroying the Other that fuels both horror movies and real-life genocides. We're all just a bite away from being the Other.
I'll now invoke that cliche about movies that grow with you. Imagine the montage: me watching the films at 13, mulleted and talking with my pals about the safest place to go. Then me watching the films at 18, getting the subtexts a little better. In my twenties I watch them more infrequently, preferring cleaner escapist fun for the first few years and misplacing that old VHS dub during a move. And then my late twenties/thirties, when DVD makes fantastic versions of these films cheap and widely-available and I'm impressed by how much is in there behind the blood.
Apart from the Romero movies, I never got into gore. I can't tell any of the Friday the 13th movies apart. Apart from his recut of Dawn, I've never seen an Argento film. Still, I count Romero's films as among the most meaningful to me because they're so clearly more than genre films, and I'd rank his first two Dead films in the top ten American horror films, in the same rarefied air as Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freaks, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rosemary's Baby.
Both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead open with the female leads waking from nightmares. It's not just lazy repetition. What they're dreaming of is a doomsday that has come true, and the innocent desire to wake up and discover that it was all the mind's trickery is all the hope that remains. Can I tell you that I've never dreamed of flying in an X-Wing or fighting a lightsaber battle? Sure, that Joseph Campbell hero's journey bullshit might run rampant through our myth patterns, but it never ran freely through my subconscious. Nor have I ever literally dreamed that I was a superhero. But over the last twenty years, I've dreamed at least ten times that I was in Romero's broken world where there's no more room in hell. Man, waking up from that dream is something else. It runs deep. And tomorrow night I'll probably get the chance to shake his hand and tell him thanks.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Wow, fun
We got home last night from the beach after having a fantastic time. We spent the week at Emerald Isle, NC with the Ottermans and their three kids, whose ages mesh perfectly with our own daughters. The key to our success, I think, had a lot to do with our adherence to this demanding schedule:
Sunday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Monday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Tuesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Wednesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Thursday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Friday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Saturday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Some other summative and notable facts:
Collective hours spent waist-deep in the Atlantic Ocean: 7
Pages read: 100 (I would have liked this to be higher, clearly)
Hours spent writing: 2 (ditto)
Adults (out of 4) who suffered sunburn: 2
Kids (out of 6) who suffered sunburn: 0
Movies seen theatrically: 1 (Batman Begins {sigh, we once had such high hopes for Nolan})
Meals of alive-earlier-that-day fish and crustaceans: 2
Beverages consumed: approx. 86 units of beer, 2 bottles of wine, 15 pitchers of Margaritas
Husbands v. wives Pictionary standings: 0 W, 4 L (a source of continual humiliation)
Sunday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Monday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Tuesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Wednesday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Thursday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Friday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Saturday: played on beach & swam in ocean
Some other summative and notable facts:
Collective hours spent waist-deep in the Atlantic Ocean: 7
Pages read: 100 (I would have liked this to be higher, clearly)
Hours spent writing: 2 (ditto)
Adults (out of 4) who suffered sunburn: 2
Kids (out of 6) who suffered sunburn: 0
Movies seen theatrically: 1 (Batman Begins {sigh, we once had such high hopes for Nolan})
Meals of alive-earlier-that-day fish and crustaceans: 2
Beverages consumed: approx. 86 units of beer, 2 bottles of wine, 15 pitchers of Margaritas
Husbands v. wives Pictionary standings: 0 W, 4 L (a source of continual humiliation)
Friday, June 10, 2005
Penguins to be owned by man named Boots
I didn't mean for this blog to become so sports-heavy, but I've got to nod at this news, which came out of nowhere a day or two after it was reported simply that the team had attracted some attention from west coast investors.
Observation #1: This is what I love about the Penguins. There's been no professional hockey in North America for nearly a full calendar year. Other than reports on the ongoing CBA negotiations, there's been no hockey news of substance for a year apart from some planned tweaks to goalie equipment and puck-playing. Despite that, the Penguins manage to make news regarding their ownership/financial situation. It just can't be beat. This is the team that's been twice-bankrupt, many-ownered and under constant financial stress. You'd think that removing all operating expenses from the team would allow them to stay out of the papers and away from speculation concerning their capital health. Uh, no.
Observation #2: Like the proverbial refrigerator-eskimo transaction, you kind of wonder how you go about selling a team that's pretty much unable to play. Maybe the time's right because things will soon be settled and costs will be fixed, and maybe the team's sufficiently undervalued now because (a) they just emerged from bankruptcy and (b) the greatest-hockey-player-ever-to-live/owner is getting too old for this shit.
Observation #3: When the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County were passing out new stadiums in the late nineties, the team's then-owner instead settled for some cheap upgrades to the current building in an effort to keep his debt leveraged just a little while longer. The team pins its survival in Pittsburgh on a new arena, and pins arena financing on the receipt of one of the forthcoming slots licenses for the Civic Arena. Shouldn't the team be a lock to get a slots license if they're owned by a guy whose name ends in "o"?
Observation #1: This is what I love about the Penguins. There's been no professional hockey in North America for nearly a full calendar year. Other than reports on the ongoing CBA negotiations, there's been no hockey news of substance for a year apart from some planned tweaks to goalie equipment and puck-playing. Despite that, the Penguins manage to make news regarding their ownership/financial situation. It just can't be beat. This is the team that's been twice-bankrupt, many-ownered and under constant financial stress. You'd think that removing all operating expenses from the team would allow them to stay out of the papers and away from speculation concerning their capital health. Uh, no.
Observation #2: Like the proverbial refrigerator-eskimo transaction, you kind of wonder how you go about selling a team that's pretty much unable to play. Maybe the time's right because things will soon be settled and costs will be fixed, and maybe the team's sufficiently undervalued now because (a) they just emerged from bankruptcy and (b) the greatest-hockey-player-ever-to-live/owner is getting too old for this shit.
Observation #3: When the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County were passing out new stadiums in the late nineties, the team's then-owner instead settled for some cheap upgrades to the current building in an effort to keep his debt leveraged just a little while longer. The team pins its survival in Pittsburgh on a new arena, and pins arena financing on the receipt of one of the forthcoming slots licenses for the Civic Arena. Shouldn't the team be a lock to get a slots license if they're owned by a guy whose name ends in "o"?
If all the year were playing holidays...
Went to see the Pixies last night with my friend Chris and his friends, Chris and Chris. Saw Tara also and had a great time catching up. A good time was had by all, though they should have played longer than one hour.
We're leaving tomorrow at lunchtime for the beach, and won't return until the 19th. I can't imagine (1) finding or (2) seeking too tenaciously internets access. It's too bad, really, because I watched Rosetta again two nights ago and have some comments sketched out, but haven't made the time to put them into something postable. In short, big thanks to Jeremy and Doug for encouraging me to quit putting off seeing it. I wouldn't have thought the bros. Dardenne would be able to blow me away again like I'd never seen one of their films before. Well, as Fonzie says, I was wruu-uuu. Wruuu-uuu.
We're leaving tomorrow at lunchtime for the beach, and won't return until the 19th. I can't imagine (1) finding or (2) seeking too tenaciously internets access. It's too bad, really, because I watched Rosetta again two nights ago and have some comments sketched out, but haven't made the time to put them into something postable. In short, big thanks to Jeremy and Doug for encouraging me to quit putting off seeing it. I wouldn't have thought the bros. Dardenne would be able to blow me away again like I'd never seen one of their films before. Well, as Fonzie says, I was wruu-uuu. Wruuu-uuu.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Bonhoeffer and the Rotting Undead
Extracurricularly speaking, I'm working on two things right now with a deadline around June 22 to finish them.
Chronologically first, in anticipation of the June 24 release of Land of the Dead, I'm revisiting Romero's three zombie films and will be posting about what I think they mean, or at least what they've meant to me. I'm really unsure whether the new film will be driven by the sort of thoughtful, pointed and, well, human touches that make the other films rise far above the splatter. Romero's maverick enough not to just give in to any studio dictates to make a bland shock flick , but it's been a while since he's has studio funding to this degree, and the tone of last year's Dawn remake gives us some insight into the sort of vision Universal might have for this film. And how many times can you go back to the Rio Bravo well and come back with something fresh? Still, I'm holding out cautious optimism.
Chronologically second, I'm still up in the air schedulewise as to whether I'll be able to attend Flickerings, the film portion of Cornerstone, which falls on the last day of June and the first few days of July. They've got a fantastic film and seminar lineup this year, and I'd hate to miss it. I caught Flickerings for the first time last year and had an unforgettable time. Flickerings is exactly the sort of thing I like to see pushed on me and the rest of the church. It's been on my mind for a while that one reason people aren't living examined lives and the church isn't as effective as it could and should be is because we're too lazy or afraid to use the highest and best art to inspire us and help us work through the messier problems of being human. Simplistic and artless entertainments don't do a lot, ultimately, to hold up a mirror to nature. Flickerings is a deliberate step toward taking the best film art available and fusing it with the enthusiasm and endless possibilities that come (should come) with a life battered by the three-personed God. It's an effort toward going back to the point a couple of hundred years ago when the American church decided art was a hinderance or, worse, a luxury, and throwing the blinders off.
I'm writing some intro material for the screening of Doblmeier's film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and watching his film and two other Bonhoeffer films and reading some things to prepare. Bonhoeffer is such a fascinating and integral figure, and just when the act of meaningful sacrificial death seems to have become culturally worn out through overuse and empty repetition, a Bonhoeffer or a Balthazar comes along to strip off all the accumulated baggage and present the terrible and awesome thing as it is.
Chronologically first, in anticipation of the June 24 release of Land of the Dead, I'm revisiting Romero's three zombie films and will be posting about what I think they mean, or at least what they've meant to me. I'm really unsure whether the new film will be driven by the sort of thoughtful, pointed and, well, human touches that make the other films rise far above the splatter. Romero's maverick enough not to just give in to any studio dictates to make a bland shock flick , but it's been a while since he's has studio funding to this degree, and the tone of last year's Dawn remake gives us some insight into the sort of vision Universal might have for this film. And how many times can you go back to the Rio Bravo well and come back with something fresh? Still, I'm holding out cautious optimism.
Chronologically second, I'm still up in the air schedulewise as to whether I'll be able to attend Flickerings, the film portion of Cornerstone, which falls on the last day of June and the first few days of July. They've got a fantastic film and seminar lineup this year, and I'd hate to miss it. I caught Flickerings for the first time last year and had an unforgettable time. Flickerings is exactly the sort of thing I like to see pushed on me and the rest of the church. It's been on my mind for a while that one reason people aren't living examined lives and the church isn't as effective as it could and should be is because we're too lazy or afraid to use the highest and best art to inspire us and help us work through the messier problems of being human. Simplistic and artless entertainments don't do a lot, ultimately, to hold up a mirror to nature. Flickerings is a deliberate step toward taking the best film art available and fusing it with the enthusiasm and endless possibilities that come (should come) with a life battered by the three-personed God. It's an effort toward going back to the point a couple of hundred years ago when the American church decided art was a hinderance or, worse, a luxury, and throwing the blinders off.
I'm writing some intro material for the screening of Doblmeier's film on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and watching his film and two other Bonhoeffer films and reading some things to prepare. Bonhoeffer is such a fascinating and integral figure, and just when the act of meaningful sacrificial death seems to have become culturally worn out through overuse and empty repetition, a Bonhoeffer or a Balthazar comes along to strip off all the accumulated baggage and present the terrible and awesome thing as it is.
Monday, June 6, 2005
MAGNEAT-O!
ALTERNATE TITLE: RIBBON CANDY
There's no way to say it but to say it: while driving, every time I find myself following or passing a car with a magnetic ribbon or ribbons adorning its metal end, I'm struck by an odd combination of emotions-- a wave of mild derision directed at the other vehicle's driver coupled with a shot of loathing directed at myself. I'll explain.
For eight years I generally commuted to and from the office via the 68B, and on most days I'd spend a ride one or both ways talking with friends I'd met largely as a result of those bus rides. Tara and I met several years ago and discovered that we had a lot of the same interests-- film, pop culture and nostalgia for the things of our youth. She's hilarious, too. She works in marketing.
Talking on the bus one day, we realized that we had approximately the same amount of contempt for the magnetic ribbon fad. It's not primarily a politically-motivated matter (though there was some of that, in varying degrees, for each of us) as much as it was rhetorically-motivated. What sort of statement is made about something by attaching something to your car? Nothing coherent or useful. A bumper sticker, at least, has some semblance of a message through words and phrases. A bumper sticker's the Declaration of Independence in comparison to a magnetic ribbon. With its pretty color and refined script and its membership in the Signa Phi Nothing fraternity, ribbons are anathema to any semblance of discourse, and in an age when commentators across the ideological spectrum lament our national ability to say well-reasoned things about the world at large, the last thing we need is the reduction of something so complex to such trite terms.
I don't know exactly when the magnet ribbon craze blew up-- last fall, maybe, or the end of last summer-- but it couldn't possibly have followed a more absurd path to ubiquity. The original yellow magnetic ribbons, with their ties to the yellow ribbons of the '90-'91 Gulf War and hearkening back to the practice and song popularized during World War II, at least had some preceding reference point-- as ribbons. Over the course of the succeeding months to the present day, I've seen the yellow, camouflage and red, white and blue ones devoted to the military and war effort, black ones devoted to POW/MIA, pink ones for breast cancer, purple ones for Down's Syndrome, dalmation-spotted ones for spay/neuter. Uterine cancer. Child abuse. Cystic Fibrosis. Illiteracy. Several I've forgotten and should have written down.
Every malady's got a ribbon, and every ribbon's got a malady.
With so many deserving things to support and memorialize, how can any one person or any one car adequately address them all? Clearly, if you're going to show your sympathy for a significant number of these causes and diseases, you'll need a large automotive ass to display all that solidarity. It is likely that nothing less than a sport utility vehicle will suffice, 'cause Blazer got back.
Magnetic ribbons took a final surreal step locally when an entrepreneur figured out that the yellow of the ribbons was a rough match with the yellow that the Steelers and Pirates wear. A simple change to the artwork to make one of the ribbon ends black and the addition of generic "GO PITTSBURGH" script transformed what was a solemn, yet cheesy reminder of the war effort into a solemn, yet cheesy reminder that we'd like to win that fifth Super Bowl. You won't be surprised to hear that version sold like hotcakes. Maybe that was a clue that any effort to counterpunch the magnetic ribbon message would have fallen short. When we've reached a point where we openly use the same rhetorical devices and precise symbolic language for military support and sports team support, what chance is there of mockery actually getting through?
Still, and while I realize that I'm breaking no new ground in criticizing jingo kitsch (Aside: I have to say I really wasn't satisfied with the death given to Jingo Kitsch in that Star Wars movie. Or am I thinking of Kitsch Jingo?), back in midwinter Tara and I were pretty surprised there hadn't been a more widespread mocking response to ribbon fever. Particularly in light of the proliferation of responses to various bumper sticker and car ornament fads, and the ridiculous cheapness of producing these things, there really should have been an available option for magnetimockery. One doubtlessly cold January day, Tara and I were sitting on the bus, wondering aloud why this was the case. After a pause, one of us turned to the other. I don't remember which of us it was, and I don't know whether a comic book illustrator would have depicted the moment as *light bulb illuminates above head* or *dollar signs where eyes should be*. What I do recall is that over the course of a bus ride, a lunch and a couple of dozen e-mails exchanged, we mapped out a pretty great path toward starting an ironic magentic ribbon business.
Tara's the design and marketing whiz, of course, and she quickly gleaned what sort of startup costs we'd encounter to buy the art software and get them printed. She looked into the e-commerce angle and the website setup. We brainstormed some design concepts. We had two fantastic business names (see top of post). We were pretty fond of one ribbon that might be multi-colored and announce, comprehensively, "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING." Would that be read ironically, or would some ribbon people unwittingly see it as an opportunity to show broad sympathy? Another design would look suspiciously like the genuine article, but upon closer reading, it would say "BUY A CLUE, NOT A RIBBON." Other versions might read "THIS MAGNET SHOWS I CARE" or "UNITE EVERYTHING" or "HERE'S MY EXCUSE TO NOT DO ANYTHING." They practically write themselves.
My part of the startup labor was to come up with a business plan and to think about ways to market them. Then we'd refine our designs, tighten up the text and crank them out. But then I had this important arbitration that tied me up the latter half of January and early February. (Or so I told myself) And then right after that I had to start packing so that we'd be ready for our late-February move. (Or so I told myself) Days and weeks pass and then we moved, which meant no more incidental commuting with Tara, and it became that much easier to procrastinate. It takes several weeks to unpack and get remotely settled-in. (Or so I told myself) Then you realize that it's April and some things have a definite sell-by date, ironic magnetic ribbons being one of them. And maybe we never would have had the time to do it right with our day jobs, and maybe it's for the best that we didn't spend a couple of thousand dollars on this just to get stuck with boxes full of magnets. But, man, wouldn't I like to know whether it would have worked? Wouldn't I love to see the What-If Issue devoted to that fledgling business?
So when a month or so ago I pulled behind a hipster's car and saw a series of puke-colored magnetic ribbons proclaiming, e.g., that he "SUPPORT(S) ROCK AND ROLL" and he "SUPPORT(S) PARTYING," among other things, all I could do was seethe.
When I started this thing, my friend Seema asked whether I really considered myself to be a wastrel. No, not really. Maybe sometimes. Like now. Sorry, Tara.
There's no way to say it but to say it: while driving, every time I find myself following or passing a car with a magnetic ribbon or ribbons adorning its metal end, I'm struck by an odd combination of emotions-- a wave of mild derision directed at the other vehicle's driver coupled with a shot of loathing directed at myself. I'll explain.
For eight years I generally commuted to and from the office via the 68B, and on most days I'd spend a ride one or both ways talking with friends I'd met largely as a result of those bus rides. Tara and I met several years ago and discovered that we had a lot of the same interests-- film, pop culture and nostalgia for the things of our youth. She's hilarious, too. She works in marketing.
Talking on the bus one day, we realized that we had approximately the same amount of contempt for the magnetic ribbon fad. It's not primarily a politically-motivated matter (though there was some of that, in varying degrees, for each of us) as much as it was rhetorically-motivated. What sort of statement is made about something by attaching something to your car? Nothing coherent or useful. A bumper sticker, at least, has some semblance of a message through words and phrases. A bumper sticker's the Declaration of Independence in comparison to a magnetic ribbon. With its pretty color and refined script and its membership in the Signa Phi Nothing fraternity, ribbons are anathema to any semblance of discourse, and in an age when commentators across the ideological spectrum lament our national ability to say well-reasoned things about the world at large, the last thing we need is the reduction of something so complex to such trite terms.
I don't know exactly when the magnet ribbon craze blew up-- last fall, maybe, or the end of last summer-- but it couldn't possibly have followed a more absurd path to ubiquity. The original yellow magnetic ribbons, with their ties to the yellow ribbons of the '90-'91 Gulf War and hearkening back to the practice and song popularized during World War II, at least had some preceding reference point-- as ribbons. Over the course of the succeeding months to the present day, I've seen the yellow, camouflage and red, white and blue ones devoted to the military and war effort, black ones devoted to POW/MIA, pink ones for breast cancer, purple ones for Down's Syndrome, dalmation-spotted ones for spay/neuter. Uterine cancer. Child abuse. Cystic Fibrosis. Illiteracy. Several I've forgotten and should have written down.
Every malady's got a ribbon, and every ribbon's got a malady.
With so many deserving things to support and memorialize, how can any one person or any one car adequately address them all? Clearly, if you're going to show your sympathy for a significant number of these causes and diseases, you'll need a large automotive ass to display all that solidarity. It is likely that nothing less than a sport utility vehicle will suffice, 'cause Blazer got back.
Magnetic ribbons took a final surreal step locally when an entrepreneur figured out that the yellow of the ribbons was a rough match with the yellow that the Steelers and Pirates wear. A simple change to the artwork to make one of the ribbon ends black and the addition of generic "GO PITTSBURGH" script transformed what was a solemn, yet cheesy reminder of the war effort into a solemn, yet cheesy reminder that we'd like to win that fifth Super Bowl. You won't be surprised to hear that version sold like hotcakes. Maybe that was a clue that any effort to counterpunch the magnetic ribbon message would have fallen short. When we've reached a point where we openly use the same rhetorical devices and precise symbolic language for military support and sports team support, what chance is there of mockery actually getting through?
Still, and while I realize that I'm breaking no new ground in criticizing jingo kitsch (Aside: I have to say I really wasn't satisfied with the death given to Jingo Kitsch in that Star Wars movie. Or am I thinking of Kitsch Jingo?), back in midwinter Tara and I were pretty surprised there hadn't been a more widespread mocking response to ribbon fever. Particularly in light of the proliferation of responses to various bumper sticker and car ornament fads, and the ridiculous cheapness of producing these things, there really should have been an available option for magnetimockery. One doubtlessly cold January day, Tara and I were sitting on the bus, wondering aloud why this was the case. After a pause, one of us turned to the other. I don't remember which of us it was, and I don't know whether a comic book illustrator would have depicted the moment as *light bulb illuminates above head* or *dollar signs where eyes should be*. What I do recall is that over the course of a bus ride, a lunch and a couple of dozen e-mails exchanged, we mapped out a pretty great path toward starting an ironic magentic ribbon business.
Tara's the design and marketing whiz, of course, and she quickly gleaned what sort of startup costs we'd encounter to buy the art software and get them printed. She looked into the e-commerce angle and the website setup. We brainstormed some design concepts. We had two fantastic business names (see top of post). We were pretty fond of one ribbon that might be multi-colored and announce, comprehensively, "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING." Would that be read ironically, or would some ribbon people unwittingly see it as an opportunity to show broad sympathy? Another design would look suspiciously like the genuine article, but upon closer reading, it would say "BUY A CLUE, NOT A RIBBON." Other versions might read "THIS MAGNET SHOWS I CARE" or "UNITE EVERYTHING" or "HERE'S MY EXCUSE TO NOT DO ANYTHING." They practically write themselves.
My part of the startup labor was to come up with a business plan and to think about ways to market them. Then we'd refine our designs, tighten up the text and crank them out. But then I had this important arbitration that tied me up the latter half of January and early February. (Or so I told myself) And then right after that I had to start packing so that we'd be ready for our late-February move. (Or so I told myself) Days and weeks pass and then we moved, which meant no more incidental commuting with Tara, and it became that much easier to procrastinate. It takes several weeks to unpack and get remotely settled-in. (Or so I told myself) Then you realize that it's April and some things have a definite sell-by date, ironic magnetic ribbons being one of them. And maybe we never would have had the time to do it right with our day jobs, and maybe it's for the best that we didn't spend a couple of thousand dollars on this just to get stuck with boxes full of magnets. But, man, wouldn't I like to know whether it would have worked? Wouldn't I love to see the What-If Issue devoted to that fledgling business?
So when a month or so ago I pulled behind a hipster's car and saw a series of puke-colored magnetic ribbons proclaiming, e.g., that he "SUPPORT(S) ROCK AND ROLL" and he "SUPPORT(S) PARTYING," among other things, all I could do was seethe.
When I started this thing, my friend Seema asked whether I really considered myself to be a wastrel. No, not really. Maybe sometimes. Like now. Sorry, Tara.
The Inner Beavis Continues Unabated
My friend and I took our daughters to the Pirate game Saturday night and watched the home team waste eight shutout innings from Mark Redman by stranding an absurd number of baserunners. And why would there be so many Braves fans trekking to Pittsburgh for an early June game, unless Braves Nation is especially strong in West Virginia, which would. Explain. So. Much. Still, the sting of the 1-0 loss was ameliorated by the fits of involuntary giggles induced by learning who wore the number #17 for the Pirates back in 1938. Yeah, I'm a mature guy.
A mature guy who contemplates contacting Mitchell & Ness to see what it runs to personalize some 1938 flannel.
A mature guy who contemplates contacting Mitchell & Ness to see what it runs to personalize some 1938 flannel.
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
May, 2005 by the numbers
Not a terribly viewing-prolific month.
Movies seen and dates:
5/31 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
5/28 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/26 Gilmore Girls 3.10, 3.11, 3.12
5/25 Gilmore Girls 3.9
5/24 Rosetta
5/22 Gilmore Girls 3.7, 3.8
5/21 Gilmore Girls 3.5, 3.6
5/19 Gilmore Girls 3.4
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/18 Wild at Heart
5/12 Gilmore Girls 3.3
5/11 Gilmore Girls 3.2
5/10 Gilmore Girls 3.1
5/9 Primer
5/7 Uzak (Distant)
5/6 The Birds
5/4 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 3 and 4
5/3 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 2
5/2 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 1
Movies seen and dates:
5/31 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
5/28 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/26 Gilmore Girls 3.10, 3.11, 3.12
5/25 Gilmore Girls 3.9
5/24 Rosetta
5/22 Gilmore Girls 3.7, 3.8
5/21 Gilmore Girls 3.5, 3.6
5/19 Gilmore Girls 3.4
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5/18 Wild at Heart
5/12 Gilmore Girls 3.3
5/11 Gilmore Girls 3.2
5/10 Gilmore Girls 3.1
5/9 Primer
5/7 Uzak (Distant)
5/6 The Birds
5/4 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 3 and 4
5/3 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 2
5/2 Fanny & Alexander (television version) Part 1
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